Shadow Puppets
by Drabble Box
Summary: Would you tell me truthfully, or just another spectacle to induce sympathy or fear into your victim? -jxhq; Harley-Origin; Joker Scar-Origin; three-shot; Nolan-verse.


**Shadow Puppets**

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><p>Sitting in a white room was not what The Joker defined as "therapy." A white room, a straightjacket, and a set of a linoleum table and two chairs facing opposite each other. <em>This<em> was his therapy room?

"Good morning." A female doctor said as she entered the room.

The Joker leaned back in his seat as the doctor sat in the chair opposite of him. He tried to make eye contact, but she refused to look up from the manila folder in her hand.

"Real name unknown. Alias is The Joker. Patient number 6786." She read one of the pages. "Patient has been in custody for two months, and this is his first session at Arkham."

He leaned forward, his cuffed hands staying gently in his lap. "Um… 'scuse me." She looked up at him. "It's rude to talk about someone like they aren't sitting in front of you."

The doctor pursed her lips. "My name is Doctor Harleen Quinzel, and I'm going to be your doctor for your stay in Arkham."

The Joker tilted his head. "My stay?" he questioned. "Okay… what about the next time I'm in here?"

"My job is to make sure that there is no next time." She nodded to him.

He giggled slightly. "Oh." He said in a singsong voice. "You gonna cure me, doc?"

She leaned her head a bit down toward the papers. "I wouldn't say 'cure' is the right word…" she replied.

"Right, right." He replied, holding up his hands. "Because to say 'cure' would imply that there is something _wrong_ with me."

"I suppose." She nodded, tentatively replacing the papers back in the folder. "So for your stay in Arkham, I'm here to help you, talk to you, and find out what's…" she stopped, unsure of how to word it. "What's… troubling you."

"So just for this stay?" he smiled. "What about after I break out? If I come back, who will be my doctor then?"

The doctor smiled lightly. "That's not going to happen."

The Joker shrugged. "I dunno, doc. I wouldn't be to sure about that if I were you."

She connected their eyes. "Arkham Asylum has some of the finest security in the entire country. There has only ever been one successful break out in this institution, and that was before we replaced everything. Gotham City has taken many steps to make sure that would never happen again."

The Joker snorted. "Okay, doc. Whatever you say." He slapped his cuffed hands on the table. "So… what are we supposed to do?"

"Let's just talk." She said, sliding the folder to the side of the table. "Tell me about you."

The Joker shook his head with a smirk. "I wanna talk about you. If we're gonna be together often, I wanna know about _you_. You've got a whole folder about me."

"That's not the point of these sessions." She said. "You didn't write this folder. These are just what facts are known about you. I want to know what you think, not what the police department knows." She sighed. "I'll try to make this easier. I'll ask you some questions first—"

"Then I'll ask you some." He interrupted.

She bit her lip in irritation. "No. I'm not the focus of our sessions—"

"Are you a natural blonde?" he interjected again.

"Yes." She said curtly. "Now, Joker, let me set something straight. You are not here to listen to me talk. I'm here to listen to you. To help you. Nothing can be done if you don't let me."

The Joker nodded. "Okay then, level with me, doc. What are you uh…" he paused, his tongue running along his bottom lip. "Helping me _with_?"

"To understand why you do the things you do." She answered.

"But _I_ do them. I don't need to understand why. It sounds a lot like you're trying to help yourself more." He blinked slowly. "Do ya think something is wrong with me, doc? Ya think I'm _crazy_?"

"Do you?" she asked.

The Joker chuckled. "Interesting question. There's nothing wrong with being who you are, is there?"

"Depends on who you ask." She said.

"I'm asking you." He answered, leaning toward her.

She wet her lips slowly, thinking. "I suppose, on paper, saying that looks good…"

"Like communism!" he said happily, relaxing in his chair.

"Yes…" she replied hesitantly. "But then something happens inside a person's mind, drastically changing who they are. Occasionally it turns for the worst, and who they are is harmful to others." She said thoughtfully.

"Are you talking about me, doc?" The Joker smirked.

She smiled faintly. "I suppose I am, just as I'm speaking of all the other patients here in Arkham." She said, gesturing with her fingers. "Who you all are is what brought you to being here. So, obviously, there is something that is wrong."

The Joker giggled softly. "Since when did it become a crime to be who I am? What happened to freedom of speech? I have rights."

Her eyebrows furrowed. "Yes. You do have rights. But you misused them, and you violated the rights of others. In doing that, you forfeited almost all of your own." She told him, careful to choose her words. Her fingers twitched towards the folder on her right.

He shrugged. "How do you know they didn't, uh… _violate_ my rights first?"

The doctor lifted her chin at him. "Because you're still alive." She said shortly, letting her words linger in the air for a moment. "And they are not."

The Joker narrowed his eyes at her, looking at her up and down. She was pretty good, he'd have to admit. Good at putting on a doctor exterior, not letting him see what was on the inside. He'd get to her. Just as he got to Harvey Dent and just like he would eventually get to Batman.

He lifted his cuffed hands from underneath the table and pointed at her with one finger. "I think I like you." He told her, looking around the room. "I think I could get used to coming here. Who knows? Maybe next time I'll tell you how I got these scars."

"Would you tell me truthfully, or just another spectacle to induce sympathy or fear into your victim?" she asked, not phased by his charm.

Dramatically, The Joker touched a hand to his heart. "Doc, I'm hurt. Do you think _so_ little of me?" This time he could see her physically prevent herself from rolling her eyes. The signs were subtle, but he noticed the way her hands tense slightly and how the skin around her eyes grew a bit tighter in an effort to control. He smirked.

"No, Joker, I was just assuming the obvious." She sighed. "Do _you_ even know how you got those scars?"

He giggled again. Did he know how he got his scars, ha!

* * *

><p>"<em>Tom! Paul! Dinner's ready!"<em>

_A boy, no younger than ten, and his brother, no older than thirteen turned towards the direction in which their mother called. "Just a second!" Tom yelled back from atop the tree house._

_Paul, who was safe on the ground, looked up at his younger brother. "How are you gonna get down Tom?" he laughed._

"_Aw, come on Paul!" Tom pleaded. "Put the ladder back up! You know I'm scared of heights!"_

_Paul laughed at his brother again. "I thought you said you weren't a chicken." He teased._

"_I'm not!" Tom protested indignantly. But he looked at how high up he was, and started to wish he'd never said that to his brother._

_The winter wind blew, rustling the leaf-less, dead branches of the tree Tom was perched in. "Paul! Please! It's cold and I wanna get down!" Tom whined._

_Paul shook his head and laughed again. It was too much fun teasing his brother to stand the ladder back up. "Your ten years old, Tom! Be a man and climb down the tree!"_

"_But I'm _only _ten years old, Paul! I'm still a boy!" Tom argued. "Daddy says you're not a man till you're eighteen years old!"_

"_Well prove Daddy wrong!" Paul smiled meanly. "Don't you wanna make him happy? Think about how happy he'd be to see you already _were_ a man!"_

_Tom debated on the fact. He didn't really want to wait eight more years for his dad to take him fishing or hunting or any of the other things he did with his adult friends. He wanted to be a man now, so he wouldn't have to stay at him with his mom cleaning, or at school._

"_But what if I fall?" Tom asked, still timid about his fear of heights._

"_Then you'll know you're not a real man!" Paul said matter-of-factly. "Stop crying and whining, put a freaking smile on your stupid face, stop being so serious, and climb down the tree! I'm hungry!"_

_Tom glanced over his shoulder at the tree trunk. He wasn't very tall, and he didn't think that his feet could reach far enough down the tree to reach each branch. But then he heard his father come outside to get them._

"_Okay, okay!" Tom gave in, crawling to the tree trunk. And, slowly, he made his descent._

_A little under halfway down, still a good fourteen feet from the ground, Tom couldn't reach the next branch for his foot. "Paul! I'm stuck!" he shouted._

"_You're gonna have to jump down to the branch then, you idiot!" Paul replied._

_Tom looked nervously down. The ground was much too far away, and there were quite a bit of branches that stood between him and the ground. If he fell, it would not be short._

_But he'd come this far, hadn't he? Who was to say he couldn't finish the job?_

_So he chanced it, letting go of the branch he held to briefly._

_He felt his toes touch the desired branch, but it wasn't enough to keep him stable and his foot slipped. With a shout, Tom fell from his height, falling down the tree, hitting his chin on the branch that he was supposed to be standing on._

_In an attempt to stop his plunge, Tom twisted himself to find a hold, but instead his feet hit another branch, snapping it from the tree. His right cheek harshly grazed the broken part still attached. For a split second, he felt something wet hit him._

_Frantic, he threw his arms out, clawing at the dozens of branches he hit with his feet and his face. He heard a sickening crack before he felt the pain in his ankle explode as it broke._

_He screamed, and hoped to God that the ground was near, somehow managing his broken ankle into his hand as the branches slapped him again._

_With a thud, Tom landed on his left side, and his left cheek burst._

_Faintly, he heard Paul yelling for their parents to come out, but Tom began to drift out of consciousness. He felt blood trickling from his wounded cheeks. He was blinded by the pain in his ankle, not to mention the entire rest of his body._

_The last thing he heard before he fainted was his father's disapproving voice._

* * *

><p>The doctor stared at The Joker for a good minute after he finished his elaborate story. "And I'm supposed to believe this is true?" She questioned.<p>

The Joker shrugged. "You don't _have_ to believe it. But it might help your… uh… _research_ if you do."

The doctor sighed. "Alright." She nodded. "That will be all for today. I've heard enough." She gathered the folder in her hands, slapping it once against the table so the papers would straighten out. "I'll see you next week, Joker."

The Joker licked his lips. "I look forward to it, Harley."

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><p>Okay! So this is going to be a three-part fic thing… It will be all tied together. It's just a slight telling of how Harley came to be, Nolan-verse style. But I mostly started this to experiment with The Joker's scar stories. I think the one I wrote is actually pretty good considering it's my first ever attempt to write one. I mostly like the fact that I gave him a name that <em>wasn't<em> Jack. Anytime anyone writes Joker's back-story of any kind, be it Nolan-verse or Animated Series, they always use Jack Napier. Granted, that's the one that is the most common, and the name Jack in general. But I don't think ALL of the performances or whatever for The Joker have the same back-story or the same name. I think The Joker in _The Killing Joke_ is different than Heath Ledger's.

So yeah. I figured I'd try my hand with it. I'm satisfied with this. I actually really like my Harley in this one. I don't like the fact that anytime someone writes Harley-transformation sequence, The Joker can see through her straight away. I like to give her more depth, making her harder for him to figure out. He pretends to have Batman all figured out, but I don't think he does. Sure, Batman is predictable, but I think if The Joker _knew_ Batman. REALLY knew him. He would know what Batman's identity is.

Okay. I'm off on a tangent. Ignore me.

Oh. And don't ask about the title. It'll make sense later.

Please tell me what you think about my scar story and about my writing in general! Writing The Joker and Harley is very important to me. I want to get better at it!

R&R please!

Katie!


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